Team Lead Savory

At Corbion, we exist to champion preservation in all its forms, preserving food and food production, health, and our planet.

The role
As Team Lead Savory, you will lead and further build Corbion’s Savory Food Applications capability in the Asia Pacific region. Based in Singapore and reporting to the APAC RD&A Director, this role combines people leadership, deep technical expertise, and customer-facing innovation.
You will be responsible for guiding the Savory Application team across meat, prepared meals, sauces, dressings, and condiments, while also remaining hands-on in projects yourself. Beyond managing today’s portfolio, this role plays a key part in shaping the future of Corbion’s savory innovation strategy in APAC and offers a clear long-term growth path into broader application leadership.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop the Savory Application team in Singapore, currently consisting of application specialists and technical service experts focused on meat and savory applications.
• Set technical direction and drive innovation for savory systems, including meat, prepared meals, sauces, dressings, and condiments, aligned with Corbion’s Preservation and Specialty Ingredients strategy.
• Act as the APAC savory subject matter expert, providing advanced technical support to customers, sales, and business development teams.
• Manage and execute customer and internal innovation projects end-to-end, ensuring high technical quality, timely delivery, and efficient use of resources.
• Maintain a balanced role with approximately 50% leadership/project coordination and 50% hands-on technical contribution, including designing trials, working in the lab, and developing prototypes.
• Lead the savory project pipeline from concept through pilot and production scale up, supporting customer qualifications and commercialization.
• Collaborate closely with Business Development and Commercial teams to translate market and consumer trends into new concepts, prototypes, and value propositions.
• Serve as a technical ambassador during customer visits, plant trials, industry events, and trade shows across the APAC region.
• Partner with global RD&A teams on platform technologies such as protein functionality, oxidation control, microbial stability, and preservation systems.
• Support Product Management, Quality, Supply Chain, and Operations on specifications, claims, sensory standards, analytical requirements, and process capability.
• Ensure a safe, hygienic, and well managed food application laboratory environment, including oversight of equipment, raw materials, and procedures.
• Build and maintain strong external networks with customers, suppliers, academia, and industry partners to accelerate learning and innovation.

You bring

• A PhD or MSc in Food Science, Food Technology, Culinary Science, Chemistry, or a related discipline.
• More than 10 years of experience in the savory food industry, ideally across culinary, meat, prepared meals, sauces, dressings, or condiments.
• Proven people management or team leadership experience, with the ability to lead diverse, multicultural technical teams.
• Strong hands-on application and product development expertise; experience limited to analytical or purely laboratory analysis is not sufficient.
• Experience managing customer projects and translating technical solutions into customer value; prior exposure to both B2C (end product) and B2B (ingredient) environments is advantageous.
• A practical, hands-on mindset with willingness to work in the lab when needed and lead by example.
• Strong communication and presentation skills, capable of engaging confidently with customers, commercial teams, and senior stakeholders.
• Commercial curiosity and innovation mindset, with sensitivity to market and consumer trends; formal new business development experience is a plus but not mandatory.
• Ability to inspire trust, foster collaboration, and adapt leadership style to different personalities and cultural backgrounds.
• Willingness to travel up to 20%, primarily within the APAC region (typically short trips of up to one week).

What we offer

• A high impact leadership role at the heart of Corbion’s savory innovation agenda in Asia Pacific.
• The opportunity to shape and grow a critical application team while remaining technically active and close to the product.
• Strong exposure to customers, senior management, and strategic decision making at regional level.
• A collaborative, international R&D environment where innovation, learning, and empowerment are actively encouraged.

About Corbion

Corbion is the global market leader in lactic acid and its derivatives, and a leading supplier of emulsifiers, functional enzyme blends, minerals, vitamins, and algae ingredients. We use our unique expertise in fermentation and other processes to deliver sustainable solutions for the preservation of food and food production, health, and our planet. For over 100 years, we have been uncompromising in our commitment to safety, quality, innovation and performance. Drawing on our deep application and product knowledge, we work side-by-side with customers to make our cutting-edge technologies work for them. Our solutions help differentiate products in markets such as food, home & personal care, animal nutrition, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and bioplastics. In 2025, Corbion generated annual sales of €1,267.4 million and had a workforce of 2,408 FTE. For more information: www.corbion.com

Corbion is an equal opportunity employer and committed to a diverse workplace.  All applicants will be considered equally.

Corbion does not accept unsolicited resumes from individual recruiters or third party recruiting agencies in response to job postings. No fee will be paid to third parties who submit unsolicited candidates directly to our hiring managers. All candidates must be submitted by approved Corbion vendors who have been expressly requested to make a submission by our Talent Acquisition team for a specific job opening. No placement fees will be paid to any firm unless such a request has been made by the Corbion Talent Acquisition team and such candidate was submitted to the Corbion Talent Acquisition Team.